Self-driving cars may be the future, but until we can learn to coexist with them, there are going to be awkward growing pains on the road. That was the takeaway from self-driving crash report data released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and Google, the company spearheading the campaign for self-driving cars.
Google’s report details some eyebrow-raising data: their fleet of 23 self-driving vehicles has driven a total of about 1.8 million miles, and was involved in 12 total traffic collisions since hitting the open Mountain View, CA roads back in 2009.
12 accidents (with no reported injuries) over the course of 1.8 million miles traveled sounds like an incredible feat, but interestingly enough, that ratio of accidents to miles traveled is actually higher than that reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In 2014, about 4 million “Property Damage Only” crashes were reported over the course of nearly 3 trillion miles traveled. If we extrapolate Google’s crash data to match the 3 trillion miles traveled, they would have reported about 20 million crashes, five times greater than the nationally reported amount.
Of course, those numbers fail to take into account the fact that the NHTSA only reports crashes which have been reported to the police. According to Google, as many as 5 million accidents go unreported, and that still doesn’t count the many fender benders and minor scrapes that happen daily.
Most importantly, of those 12 collisions, all were the fault of the other party – in fact, the vast majority of them involved a human-manned vehicle rear-ending Google’s autonomous vehicles. Some of the crashes paint a vivid picture of poorly practiced driver safety. Google’s cars were commonly rear-ended while traveling at single-digit speeds, and incidents regularly occurred at intersections and red lights. These are hallmark signs of distracted driving and not being mindful of your surroundings.
And as driving becomes progressively more convenient, so too does the need to be even more aware of what’s going on on the road. In a few key incidents, the passenger of a Google car had to assume manual control of the vehicle in order to avoid vehicles that had run a stop sign or cut into their lane.
Self-driving cars may be less fallible than humans, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely infallible. Ultimately, the message is the same: whether you’re driving a car or “driving” a car, having knowledge of what’s going on around you is key to safe driving and prevention of potential accidents.